“Know? About what?” The irony of her predicament pricked Rose’s well-honed sense of the macabre. She shook her head minutely, swore under her breath. Bad enough that this idiot assumed she was working with the same guy who’d been stalking her all day, the same guy who she did actually work with at Dobkin & Searle; but now he was convinced she was the one doing the stalking, on some kind of cockamamie police sting or stakeout or whatever the hell he’d cooked up in his diseased so-called brain.

“Don’t give me any of your crap, lady. Two dicks with badges come sniffing ’round my shit and you say coincidence. I say there’s a bullet for each of y’all right here if you don’t tell me what you know!”

“Okay, listen—we can prove we’re not here for you,” said Alex, surprisingly cool considering the Miami Vice style tan on his face was now almost as pale as Rose’s natural pasty pallor. “We can prove we don’t know you. You’ve got it all wrong, friend.”

She knew Alex was just bullshitting—how could they possibly prove they didn’t know this guy—but he sounded sincere and plausible and like he was on this asshole’s side. It was all about defusing the situation now, with talk, experience, and not wanting to eat a bullet. Rose resolved to let Alex do the talking. He had much more experience as a PI and a lesser propensity for rubbing people up the wrong way. Especially strangers. Yep, she needed to keep her mouth shut.

Unfortunately, the gunman disagreed. “Your turn.” He pointed the piece at her forehead from about six feet away. Not close enough for her to try a disarming move. She chewed her bottom lip, struggling to find a clever rejoinder.

The only thing that came to mind was the truth. “You live in the same building as my mom. She’s the only reason I’m here.”

He blinked at her. “What’s her name?”

“Blythe. Blythe Foley, Apartment Four-Twelve. She’s lived here for years.”

“You’re lying. You’re with this piece of crap. He was skulking around right outside my…he was all over my stuff.”

“He was tailing me,” she said impatiently. “He’s not here for you. He’s here for me. Do you get it?”

The gunman spat his incredulity at her, a mixture of anger and black amusement really animating him now. Rose wanted to explain the whole story to him, but she didn’t know the whole story. Only Alex did. “Tell him,” she snapped at her colleague. “Tell him why you’re here before he does something really dumb.”